As Voice over Internet Protocol communication matures and as high-speed Internet becomes cheap and ubiquitous, an increasing number of businesses are ditching conventional landlines and jumping to VoIP. Companies are not only marketing products or services, but marketing themselves as well. No matter the size or type, every business should have the tools and solutions needed to present themselves in a professional manner, while maximizing their ability to work efficiently and stay connected to customers and co-workers.

While some small businesses may believe they can get by with simply using their smartphones for work purposes, even the smallest of businesses can benefit from a central business phone system, because it presents a unified face to customers, employees and partners.

Are the potential pitfalls worth the potential monetary payoffs? I’ll walk you through the basics, discuss the pros and cons, and take a look at three commercial VoIP services of varying complexity.

While it may be intuitive, mobile phone plans are simply not set up to offer the same business features that specifically designed business phone systems offer. For example, mobile phones can’t offer a virtual receptionist to answer calls and quickly and easily connect customers with the proper company contacts, or provide important business information like hours and directions.

Generally, things are pretty simple if you’re looking for a hosted service. Many of the top VoIP providers handle all the heavy lifting offsite, delivering calls to your phones and software clients without much hassle, especially if you use phones that are plug-and-play certified for the service in question. The majority require no additional on-site hardware aside from those phones; at most, you might need to find a space for a small box of hardware somewhere on-site.

In contrast, maintaining a self-hosted, on-site VoIP system requires a bit more work. You need an IP-based private branch exchange-a VoIP-friendly version of the PBX phone systems that many offices use-to route your calls to the appropriate phones on your network, as well as a device called a PSTN gateway. The PSTN gateway sits between the IP-PBX software and the analog signals of the public switched telephone network, converting calls to and from digital signals as necessary.

No matter which option you choose, typically you can handle the basic settings for your phone lines or extensions over the phone, while tweaking more advanced options requires diving into your provider’s online account interface.

What Do You Need to Implement VoIP?

Depending on the size of your company and the infrastructure you already have in place, jumping on the VoIP bandwagon could cost your company next to nothing, or it could entail significant up-front costs.
Even home broadband connections can handle several VoIP calls simultaneously, though you’ll need to be sure to leave bandwidth available for other applications as well.VoIP requires a broadband connection-and the more simultaneous users you have, the more bandwidth you’ll need. If you work alone out of a home office, or if you have only a few employees, you won’t have much to worry about; for example, on my setup, running RingCentral’s Conection Capacity utility shows that my 15-mbps home Comcast connection could handle 11 calls simultaneously even if I had Netflix, Spotify, and an instant-messaging client running on the network at the same time.

Make sure that your internal network-including your routers and switches-can handle the load, too. Most providers suggest using a router with configurable Quality of Service settings and assigning VoIP high traffic priority to maximize quality.

If your Internet service provider has a bandwidth cap in place, you should take that into consideration as well. Most VoIP service providers use the high-quality G.711 codec for VoIP communications, which consumes 64kb of data every second you talk. In reality, even a large number of people should be able to chat it up on VoIP without having to worry about hitting bandwidth caps, but you’ll want to keep close tabs on your data usage to avoid exceeding that cap.

You’ll need a SIP-enabled phone, such as the Snom 300, if you want to make VoIP calls.Finally, even if you subscribe to a cloud-based hosted VoIP service, you’ll need to make sure your phones can communicate over VoIP. Most VoIP systems use session-initiation protocol technology to assign each phone or VoIP software client a specific address; that’s how the IP-PBX routes calls to specific lines. As such, you’ll need a SIP-enabled phone to make VoIP calls. (Some VoIP systems use H.323 technology rather than SIP, but those are rare.) If you want to keep your old analog touch-tone phones or fax machines, you can plug them into an analog telephone adapter (ATA), but they won’t be able to use many of the advanced features that SIP-based VoIP phones provide.

Over the past few weeks we have covered the various aspects of setting up an online business and what a business owner needs to create to become successful with their ecommerce solution. Operating any business is hard work offline or online, so by managing both, the business owner takes on the responsibility of dictating offline and online strategies to best suit their business.

By going over the various guides that I have previously created, the business owner will have an online plan of what it takes to operate a successful online business. There are a few extra points that I would like to state that will encourage a business to start trading online, whether it be using ecommerce software or finding a web development company.

Starting and managing an internet business is very similar to managing any other business. Solid, good business practices such as customer service, good appropriate advertising, supplying products and services at a good price and forming long-lasting business relationships, are relevant to an internet business as they are to an offline business.

Some differences that relate to an online business are:

Low Start-Up Costs – When setting up a business online it does not need to cost the owner a great deal. Ecommerce software can be utilised to build and create a solution to sell online for little cost. If the owner decides to go with a web development company then prices can be much more for a bespoke web solution. However the internet is not a place where money and sales are easy to get, it requires planning, creativity, money and significant hard work to get the ecommerce solution working to a successful standard.

Marketing Opportunities – Having an online marketing strategy to promote the business is now an essential requirement. The possibilities for marketing on the internet are huge; these could include social networks, online partnerships or digital releases. The options are far greater online and cost-effective, than offline techniques. A business owner should know there target audience and that is where online marketing can be beneficial as ecommerce software solutions can now pinpoint your area and target particular groups.

Global Audience – A business owner may want to keep their service local but they must realise that the internet is a global tool to drive an international audience to your brand. Your website visitors are likely to come from all over the world so consideration must be taken to have your website readable in different languages, if financially viable. A good ecommerce software package may have this feature available.

I hope these guides help business owners with making that first step into online business. The opportunities online are increasing all the time so all businesses serious about making a successful impact online must use these guides to create their best online solution.

Reaching a target market over has been changing and are not only limited to broadcasting and print but has also reached the Internet. How the browsing and shopping behavior of consumers have also affected the marketing strategies of online business. Thanks to digital marketing solutions, your online business can attract a market share in the big virtual commerce of the worldwide web.

It does not matter if an online is small or big business. Strength of enterprise or big investment are not prerequisites to being into online business. The virtual market place has done the leverage in promoting products and services by online marketing campaigns readily offered by some online marketing companies. They dedicate themselves in creating, managing, and channeling qualified business leads to your website. This in turn will help in your online business promotion and possibly close deals. You will have to synchronize your business needs with their services to achieve your planned goals.

For most online companies, they choose to hire an outsource or consultant services to be able to grab hold of the endless means of marketing in the Internet. These companies usually called integrated marketing company usually employs digital solutions to reach a larger specific audience that can appreciate what your online business can offer. Digital marketing solutions can involve lots of marketing digital mediums to hold the attention of their preferred customers. These channels can be e-mail, SMS, banner ads, social networking sites, digital outdoor displays and many more means that are driven by digital technology.

There are two branches of approach for digital marketing solutions. The “push” model puts a deliberate attempt to push their advertisement across their targeted audience. One classic example is the email, SMS, or newsletter. They contain the brochure or product description that a potential buyer can be interested in and delivered right to them directly. All the necessary information to get hold of the products they like are available for them in one click making it easier to draw lots of order requests. Posting comments at social sites can also reach potential customers at a very friendly way that can also help the little push to make them want to avail a product or service online.

Although some argue that some end up as spams, they can still yield a considerable attention towards your website. Another approach in digital marketing solutions is the “pull” model. They find ways to prompt the possible customers to buy the products or services you offer by exposing digital campaigns. An example would be the banner ads and outdoor digital displays. that can advertise an interesting products to the viewer and so they click it tom find out more about it.

Promoting your online business has been a lot more easier with the available digital technology that can be integrated with the Internet. Trends right now are vastly changing so you should expect some untried channels to come up any time. One example is the digital telephony campaign where digital phones are being used to make outbound calls to possible customers. You will never know when the right one for your online business company can deliver you the revenue you never dreamed of at a fraction of a price.